Lawn-mowing thoughts o the future and electric cars...

"RallyDarkstrike - Fan of 2-cyl FIATs, Eastern Bloc & Kei cars" (rallydarkstrike)
10/10/2018 at 16:57 • Filed to: Electrification

Hey all! I was out mowing our large lawn for 3 hours earlier and my mind wandered and settled on Electric cars.

First and foremost, I LOVE driving a manual, not in a snobby way, but I love the feeling and the interaction. Cars are a huge part of my life and my favorite thing in the universe, so Electric cars being a lot different than ICE cars is a large leap in some corners of my brain...

I was reading the recent, somewhat scary, climate report on how if we don’t dive towards electrification of transport by 2040 we could irreversibly damage the global climate. I thought to myself, OK, we all know Electric cars are coming and will probably be the new mainstream......but what will happen to car culture as we know it? Companies will undoubtedly lock down electric cars in a drivetrain sense....no more easy modding as we currently do to bump a few hp in with things like air intakes, etc. Sure, there will be suspension and cosmetic mods, but performance mods won’t be easy to do anymore.

It will probably be a long time before I own an electric car. Charging infrastructure here in my part of Canada is next to nonexistant out-and-about (I can think of ONE charging station in my nearby town of Lunenburg off the top of my head). I still hope charge times and range are something that can be improved on in the near future...and price...electric cars are very expensive currently and it seems to me they are hard to afford to all but those that have a spare chunk of change sitting around. Even Chevy’s Bolt EV is $45,000 CAD for the base model.....I mean, $45,000 for what is essentially a like any other 4-door hatchback! I was looking at the info for the new Hyundai Kona Electric crossover yesterday for something to do and was glad to see it’s range is a little more than 400km on a single charge, so the range is improving. I also wish somebody would make a ‘basic’ electric car...everybody seems to feel they need to be filled with gobs of fancy technology....lane-keeping, autonomous mode, radar cruise, etc etc.....can’t somebody make something more affordable with fewer features for the masses? You know....power locks, power mirrors, power windows, old-school 3-know HVAC with A/C and a small touchscreen for some car settings and the audio system....that’s it. I don’t need a zillion fancy gizmos, nore do I (at least personally) care if I have them or not.

I dunno, just some rambling thoughts that popped into my head. What do you folks think? I know everybody will adapt, and car culture will adapt....certainly not saying it will die, just saying it will be a huge shift in some ways to what we are accustomed to.

DISCUSSION (8)

TheRealBicycleBuck > RallyDarkstrike - Fan of 2-cyl FIATs, Eastern Bloc & Kei cars
10/10/2018 at 17:34

Bradley would disagree with you:

“That’s the great thing about home-built EV solutions like this; enthusiasts are able to experiment with what works and what doesn’t. In some ways, EVs are simpler to control than modern ICE cars, making DIY upgrades possible again. Electric propulsion is the new wild west of automotive tuning, whether it be adding hybrid power to non-hybrid cars, or boosting electric cars to perform better than factory. This is old-school hot rodding brought into the modern era.”

RallyDarkstrike - Fan of 2-cyl FIATs, Eastern Bloc & Kei cars > TheRealBicycleBuck
10/10/2018 at 18:16

True, but very few of us have the skills, tools or money to create our own home-built EV. Plus, most home-builts require a factory-built vehicle as a basis unless you are going FROM SCRATCH, which is all the more difficult...

shop-teacher > RallyDarkstrike - Fan of 2-cyl FIATs, Eastern Bloc & Kei cars
10/10/2018 at 18:51

Here's why electrification doesn't scare me. Torques. I like torques.

RallyDarkstrike - Fan of 2-cyl FIATs, Eastern Bloc & Kei cars > shop-teacher
10/10/2018 at 19:58

Oh, it doesn’t SCARE me, it’s just....I don’t know, as it stands, the infrastructure and cost per vehicle and whatnot are a long way off it being mainstream when we need it to happen before another 20 years...I was just wondering how the car culture will change with things seeming to be far more locked down on manufactured electric vehicles.

As for torques....torques are good, but I don’t need every electric car to do 0-60 in 3 seconds. I would be happy if there were a basic, affordable one with the same performance as my current Accent. 0-60 in 5, 6, 7 seconds is perfectly acceptable (with my non-JalOppo logic hat on).

shop-teacher > RallyDarkstrike - Fan of 2-cyl FIATs, Eastern Bloc & Kei cars
10/10/2018 at 21:29

There are definitely a lot of questions that are yet to be answered. In my opinion, none of it will much matter until we get way better at harnessing solar power.

RallyDarkstrike - Fan of 2-cyl FIATs, Eastern Bloc & Kei cars > shop-teacher
10/10/2018 at 22:03

I think the Fisker Karma did this (maybe I am remembering wrong), but I wonder how hard it would be to have two separate but tied in systems on electric cars - one for the drivetrain / big stuff (i.e. main battery charged from regen breaking and charging stations), and a solar one for smaller stuff like the radio, etc. The smaller radio/etc. system could be solar powered with panels on the roof or trunk lid or whatever and would have it’s own small dedicated battery so that extra power wouldn’t have to be used from the larger system and that larger system could continue being used for the drivetrain to provide more range...? And, if that battery got low for some reason (cloudy day, driving at night), the tie-in to the main system would kick in and the main system batteries could charge and maintain the charge of the smaller system battery.

I mean, or even integrate the solar array INTO the larger system, but as I understand it, it wouldn’t be enough to do anything to charge the larger system....hence why it could have it’s own much smaller dedicated system...?

(if any of that rambling made sense?)

shop-teacher > RallyDarkstrike - Fan of 2-cyl FIATs, Eastern Bloc & Kei cars
10/10/2018 at 22:07

Yeah, I get what you're saying. The real game changer will be when those panels actually can make a difference.

RallyDarkstrike - Fan of 2-cyl FIATs, Eastern Bloc & Kei cars > shop-teacher
10/10/2018 at 22:15

Yup, though I fear we are a long ways off before solar panels will be that efficient at that size. :/